Glance lucid
An interview with Diyan Masalanta
The heavy tint on the SUV casts a woodsy, indie-film-grainy filter on the dense greenwood of Maharlika Hills, lending a heaviness of feeling to an already restless drive. There is elsewhere to look, of course: the scattering of notes on my pad, the Rorschach pen marks on my palm, the ever-shifting features of the woman beside me. Except, there are things to be revealed in the looking, and — well, it’s been thirty minutes and I’m still steeling myself. In a while, she will settle on a face and it will be safe to look.
It is a peculiar feeling, sitting in this silence. There is an awareness to the quiet, an understanding of its nature as a concession to me — it is comfortable but thin. Intellectually, I am aware it has to be broken soon, but it turns out the decision as to when will not be mine to make: with a pointed look at my direction, DIYAN MASALANTA, venerated goddess of love, harbinger of chaos and destruction, beckons me begin. Smooth black hair meticulously disheveled, face achingly bare, hers is a familiar visage, recognizable the world — the universe, rather — over. Ah, I think, so this is what beauty means to me, today. The smirk spreading is perhaps sharper, but it might be the question I’m asking.
I ask, the gods have been silent about the past administrations, why speak up now?
An arch of the brow, that pursed-lip smile — she says, “Never has an affront been directed at me. I’ve never been known to be silent.” She faces me, a studied movement, her knees toward mine. “It’s easy to forget, in the face of all of this, but I was the loudest, once. I was the one people listened to, or else.”
I ask, what do you mean?
“The way you all go on about her.” She laughs. “It was nothing, at first. She’s always been known — that leonine quality, the come-hither curve — she was a fantasy, wasn’t she? She was the dance in the dark it’s embarrassing to have been practiced in come morning. Her change was gradual: a magazine cover you’d think explicit, then nothing for two, three years.”
As she speaks, her face shifts yet again. It is a war flashback to our introduction, days earlier — a specific face, a condition seemingly met, a shifting. Earlier, she was told I was a writer. Much later, I will be told that I was chosen for this affliction, this diligent commitment to sustaining imagery. Donna Tartt says it better, this “morbid longing for the picturesque at all costs.” I feel compelled to comment on the deliberate tucking of her hair. It is longer now, parted in the middle and chemically straightened. Deep-set eyes, suddenly lined, suddenly heavy, a finely shaped nose, wide, full lips. She has become olive-skinned and long-limbed. The resemblance is uncanny, give her a leather jacket and she could give a press conference at the Palace without anybody the wiser. It feels like a mockery. It feels like being invited in on an inside joke.
“Now when you think of her, either you’re up in arms for or against. There’s no attack command, no call. I want my power back.”
DIYAN MASALANTA’s name has always been passed down in the dark, though never in prayer. She says she reveled in this, in the unchanging narrative of her changing form, over firelight stories of despair. (She leans into me, conspiratorial. “In propaganda, Malakas and Maganda live. In history, they do not survive me.”) She doesn’t care for the flash-fiction length of her biography in grade school civics textbooks, although she does bemoan the inaccuracy.
“It feels reckless, to not know. My brothers do not care for this, they are off in Makati and Ortigas and the Fort in their tailored suits. They are all mestizos now. Apolaki — ” (god of the sun, and the battle) “ — is perhaps the most sympathetic, but the last war he won was in the 80s. He is more restless than effective. He tells the story differently every time.” She straightens, glances out the window. “But I remember when the guardias came.”
They called her Maria then, she recounts. Made her a virgin, veiled her in white, mute and in tears. “Those rosaries, that blushing. They were taught that to suffer in silence was to see the face of God. But there will always be wailing.”
And there is wailing now. An ambulance rushes past us, and where I would have been indifferent before, I am used to it now. The dead have been piling up. I suppose there is a fight in us still. Beside me, the goddess scoffs.
“I’d find it ingenious if it weren’t so insulting, to use love as an excuse. His heart is in the right place, he loves this country so. What insolence! Before, when they professed to feel this depth of emotion, they would seek me out in the forest, chase through the trees to see where the dancing is. You have gotten lazy. Now, you strike everyone down that makes to run. You do not run after them.” She seems to catch herself then, reverts to a calm. “Not that this is anything new, of course.”
When she doesn’t go on, I ask her to explain.
“Darling, this is nothing new. That I’m telling you this feels awfully like cheating, but nobody’s playing fair: this will pass. This is a story I’ve written over. People forge on and shout the same things, they invoke love. It’s best to anticipate the devastation that will follow, because this is what it means to love.” Her smile doesn’t reach her eyes. “This is what my name means. Be destroyed there. This is what I hear when prayed to. On the grounds of our lips touching, destroy where we stand.”
I prod, so?
Hers is a smile that chills. Hers is the countenance of someone for whom my reaction is commonplace. She leans back, extends herself over rich leather, crosses her legs. The point of her foot is almost demure when everything else isn’t. Her answer is an enigma because everything is.
“When you profess to love, you profess to destroy.”
There are three faces I remember best: the first, wild eyes, my mother’s nose, full lips—the deep kayumanggi of running through the forest—she says, “I am Diyan Masalanta, and I wrenched all your legends from my chest.” The second, chin tucked, cheeks a discernible peach-pink—pretty and dead-eyed, mestiza virgins veiled in blue and white—she says, “I am Diyan Masalanta, and you’ve forgotten my name.” The third, chaos, raging, wailing, a country on fire.
Comparing them on paper and in between breaths is an injustice, but I can’t help the associations my mind forms. When they open their mouths, people listen—perhaps more to the person with a seal behind her than to the goddess on the fringes of this Catholic consciousness, but people do. This hasn’t escaped Diyan Masalanta’s attention, but she’s biding her time.
“I’m certain you’ve noticed, dear, how everytime, the story shifts in the telling. Even when it’s captured—as you have, me—there’s always another way to reinterpret it for those who can’t be bothered to look. She’s particularly well-versed at the spinning, at shaping the narrative. She knows what everyone is yearning to hear, if only because she’s been whispering it already. Because she’s wanted to hear it too.”
(Like you, I had wanted to say but ultimately didn’t. All this time, all her faces have been a mirror held up to all the portraits I wish were mine. I can’t help the associations my mind forms.)
They let me off at the village gate, at my request. It’s unsafe to travel alone, a journalist and a woman, but it’s more dangerous to be seen with the likes of her. Before she closes the window, she pins me to the ground with the set of her chin.
“I’ve said it before, I’ll say it a thousand times: I’d find [this administration] ingenious if it weren’t so insulting. But if there’s something I’ve learned, it’s that when you push the story, the story pushes back. Darling, even the rocks will speak.”
Initially written for a call for submissions, but I wasn’t able to finish it on time. There isn’t a very comprehensive paper/list on the deities of Philippine mythology—or Philippine mythology in general—but for more, check out The Aswang Project! (Disclaimer: I’m not affiliated with them)
